Trinkets – the roguelike game I’ve spent the past week creating for the 7DRL competition – is finished, about 20 hours before the deadline! It’s a game about wandering an extra dimensional vault, acquiring trinkets and trying to get back home.

A build for mac is available here. Unfortunately, there’s no windows/linux build, but if you’re on one of those operating systems and want to play, the source is available here.

My high score is 59 – can you beat it? If so, let me know in the comments below!

One day remains, and I’m actually almost done. It would be nice to redo the map generator, and game balance can always be tweaked some more, but the plot and endgame are implemented, the boss-fights are done with basic AI, and there’s even a score feature. Shown below is the second of four boss fights:

Today was very productive; I finished the procedural generation of trinkets (for now, at least), improved the magic system, procedurally generated strangely worded descriptions of said trinkets, added new effects including knock-back and circular slide, and added all of the non-boss enemies, including the Abberant visible below:

Parkour shoes acquired!

Shown above is the non-procedurally-generated description of one of the coolest shoe types in the game (thus far, at least). These shoes allow you to run along walls, moving faster than enemies or even jumping over them.

I still have two more days left to go, and quite a bit still to do, including:

So, I’m about halfway through the week, but days 2-4 were all mostly occupied by other things, so the real productivity is just beginning. I’ve reworked the combat system to use the same generalized targeting/effect model as the spells. I’ve also changed trinket abilities to work on that model, divided trinkets into six types (hats, orbs, wands, cloaks, weapons, and shoes), which can be equipped and used for various nefarious purposes. I’ve started work on the procedural generation of trinkets, but there’s still a lot to do on that front, which will occupy the next day and a half, leaving me with a day and a half for enemies, plot, game balance, and a dungeon generator that isn’t stolen from the libtcod tutorial. That’s plenty of time, right?

Weapons can now replace your bump attack with one or two spell casts. This one replaces your attack with two fire bolts, but they can also sunder defenses or daze and freeze enemies, among other things.

Death Star? Death Star! DEATH STAR!This is what happens when you procedurally generate names by picking two words from a list and concatenating them…

This year I’m participating in the Seven Day Roguelike Competition, a contest to make a game in the roguelike genre in a week. (For those not familiar with it, roguelikes tend to be dungeon-crawlers with procedurally generated words, permanent character death, and often old-school graphics. There are frequently some variations from this rough description.)

I’m making a game known as ‘Trinkets’ until I think of a better name. It is a game in which a wizard strapped for cash loots a pocket dimension, and everything goes horribly wrong. It will experiment with a nontraditional power progression; you become weaker, then strong again, rather than a constant power level or steady increase. There will be a plot and randomly generated Trinkets.

My time will be somewhat limited, as I am currently a college student, but after spending most of today programming I produced the following:

Taste the power, troll scum!

I’ve used some code from some past projects, specifically most of the data structures and UI code. I’m using python, with the libtcod library.

Current features:

Move around…

…on a procedurally generated map…

…and hit things…

…which hit you back, and can kill you if you’re not careful.

Look for trinkets…

…which have magic powers…

…which are simply not as powerful (at least for now) as your spells.

Speaking of spells, you have five (and will have six), which in combination make you nearly unstoppable…

I’m pleased to announce that XM3RPG, the pen-and-paper role playing game I’ve been working on, is ready for its first public beta! Check it out here, download the rules, try it out, and please send me feedback! This is still an early beta, so there are almost certainly issues remaining – tell me what they are so I can fix them. Thanks & Enjoy!